Our Adventures and Routes in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana
Discover more from Your Own Road Overland – Expedition Conservation
Our Adventures and Routes in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana
Recapping our adventures in the Central Kalahari earlier this year 2023. We visited our favorite campsites as well as spent great times on game drives. Botswana always delivers adventures!
We’ll also recap our routes forward from Central Kalahari towards Nxai Pans. But first, let’s start from where we left off last time.
Central Kalahari Game Reserve is a fantastic adventure
In an earlier post, we already recapped some of our adventures in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (referred to here later as CKGR) in early March 2023. And we don’t want to repeat ourselves much here, so please read that older post, too.
But when we left Swakopmund (Namibia) and drove to Ghanzi (Botswana), we made campsite reservations in the DWNP (Department of Wildlife and National Parks of Botswana) office in Ghanzi. And we got just the CKGR campsites we wanted (like Leopard Pan and Kori Pan). Lucky us. Or maybe it was just the right time for the visit?
Quoting here from that previous post about the best times to visit CKGR:
If you want to visit the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, it pays to plan your visit outside of the high season, which is usually from July to October.
Between December and March is the wet season, and the roads may get very muddy and slippery. There is also the infamous “black cotton” mud, especially around the pans, which is extremely tricky to drive on. It’s as slippery as sheer ice. We’ve driven on that once in CKGR, and that was not fun, believe us.
We were in the CKGR at the beginning of March this time, but we were lucky because the rains had already ended weeks before, and the roads - and even the pans - were all dry.
Our route in the CKGR in March 2023
We drove in via the Tsau Entrance Gate. The GPS location of the gate is 21°00'04.8"S 22°47'51.1"E.
We started driving in the morning from Ghanzi, and on the cutline road leading to the Tsau Gate, we spent a night wild camping on the way. This way, we’d be early at the Park gates the following day.
We spent the night on a “fenced” clearing obviously not frequently used, but according to the marks in the sand, someone else had also recently been overnighting there.
The route from Ghanzi to Tsau Gate is not so long in kilometers (around 155 km), but the cutline road is relatively slow driving with some deep sand sections – so you’ll get to utilize your 4x4 driving skills, too. :)
And on the next day, we needed to drive all the way to our Leopard Pan campsite (CK-SUN-1). It wouldn’t be fun to hurry through the park, would it?
Elephants in Motopi Pan
We left our wild camping spot in the morning and drove to the Tsau gate, only about 8 km away. We drove into the park after registering and chatting with the game scouts. We also filled a few 5L water tanks at the gate with grey water.
As there is NO water inside the park, you must carry all your drinking water and grey water with you!
When we then arrived at the first pan, Motopi Pan, we were greeted by a herd of elephants!
We were delighted; this was our first time seeing elephants in the CKGR. We sat with them for a while at the waterhole, taking some pictures and videos, but then we had to continue, as it was a long drive ahead to Leopard Pan.
Elephants in the Motopi Pan waterhole. Early March 2023.
Through the thicket of the Passarge Valley
During this time, the Kalahari was beautifully green after the rains, but sometimes the vegetation was also very thick.
On some sections on the way through the beautiful Passarge Valley, there were parts where the two tire tracks were so narrow in the middle of the thicket that we hardly fitted through with our Defender!
Once, we almost even had to take the ax down from the roof and hack more space, but we got through with cautious and slow, low-range driving. But it’s not just that; you must also be careful with your tires.
And if you’re picky about the paint job on your car and don’t want to get any scratches, then the CKGR is not your place at this time of the year…! 🤣
Would you know someone who would also enjoy Your Own Road Overland? Refer your friends and earn rewards! 🏆
Three Nights in Leopard Pan with early morning game drives
In our opinion, the best time to do game drives is in the early morning.
Evenings are good, too, but when you start early in the morning, you have more time to spend in the bush than in the evening when you’ll want to return to camp before it’s dark.
So, every morning in the Leopard Pan, we got up around 5 a.m. when it was still dark, so we were ready to start up right before sunrise.
Game viewing this time of the year is not the best, and it’s harder to spot animals from the long grass, but it’s rewarding when you do see something.
We mostly did our drives to Sunday Pan and towards the Deception Valley.
Game Viewing in the Deception Valley and Kori Pan
After the Leopard Pan, we headed to our Kori Campsite (CKK-4) for two nights. Four campsites are there, and ours was the last in the line. It had little privacy, but it was still a nice site.
Last time, we saw a cheetah and the famous black-maned lions in the Deception Pan, but this time, we mostly spotted oryx, wildebeest, giraffes, black-backed jackals, bat-eared foxes (!), and lots of different birds, like so many kori bustards.
But one of the “jackpots” for us on this visit to the Central Kalahari was finding the nesting site of a big family of bat-eared foxes! 😃
We found this near the Kori Pan, and afterward, we spent a long time with these awesome little creatures and observed their playful presence. On every game drive we did, we stopped nearby and searched for the foxes. And most of the time, we also found them!
From Kori Pan, we drove to the Deception Valley and Deception Pan, which has always been a good game-driving area.
We also drove to Lethiau Pan and Waterhole one day, but as the road to Piper Pan and back to Kori would’ve been too long for a day, we opted not to go that far.
And that was a good decision, as when we drove back, we eventually found the lions, too! However, being true to their “flat cat” reputation during the day, that sighting was not very exciting… ;) As you can see from the pic below, lions just lie in the middle of the bush.
We had a great 5-night stay in the Central Kalahari, and this visit’s best sighting was definitely the bat-eared foxes!
Also, it was interesting to see the Kalahari so lush and green with so many different flowers blooming.
Last but not least, it was much more pleasant driving around now than it was the last time in 2019 when it was mostly mud, sliding, and pouring rain. This time, the tracks were all dry; we could even drive to the pans and didn’t need to worry so much.
We wholeheartedly recommend a visit to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve! After all these years of driving around Southern and Eastern Africa, the CKGR remains one of our all-time favorite places!
It is a magical place where you can really feel part of the wilderness and merge into nature.
From the CKGR, we first drove to Maun to stock up on groceries, rest for a few days on a familiar campsite, and try to get the crack in our windscreen fixed.
From Maun, we continued to the Boteti River before heading to the Makgadigadi and Nxai Pans – all new places we hadn’t been to before and new experiences, and we looked forward to seeing them!
But we’ll continue the story about them in the next chapter!
Meanwhile, stay wild & remember to subscribe so you won’t miss how the story continues! 😃
